Athelston

Detail of King Æthelstan (whose life Athelston may be based on) from a stained-glass window at the chapel of All Souls College, Oxford

Athelston is an anonymous Middle English verse romance in 812 lines, dating from the mid or late 14th century.[1][2] Modern scholars often classify it as a "Matter of England" romance, because it deals entirely with pre-Conquest English settings and characters.[3] It is mainly written in twelve-line stanzas rhyming AABCCBDDBEEB, though the poet occasionally varies his meter with stanzas of eight, six, or four lines.[4] The poem survives in only one manuscript, the early 15th-century Gonville and Caius MS 175, which also includes the romances Richard Coer de Lyon, Sir Isumbras and Beves of Hamtoun. It has no title there.[5] Athelston was first printed in 1829, when C. H. Hartshorne included it in his Ancient Metrical Tales.[6]

  1. ^ Lambdin, Robert Thomas; Lambdin, Laura Cooner, eds. (2000) [1998]. Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p. 28. ISBN 0313300542.
  2. ^ Dinah Birch, ed. (January 2009). "The Oxford Companion to English Literature". Athelston. Oxford Reference Online. ISBN 978-0-19-280687-1. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
  3. ^ Garbáty, Thomas J. (1984). Medieval English Literature. Lexington: D. C. Heath. p. 26. ISBN 0669033510.
  4. ^ Hibbard, Laura A. (1969) [1924]. Medieval Romance in England. A Study of the Sources and Analogues of the Non-Cyclic Metrical Romances. New York: Burt Franklin. p. 143. ISBN 0833721445.
  5. ^ Field, Rosalind (2010). "Athelston or the Middle English Nativity of St Edmund". In Field, Rosalind; Hardman, Phillipa; Sweeney, Michelle (eds.). Christianity and Romance in Medieval England. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer. p. 141. ISBN 9781843842194.
  6. ^ Ronald B. Herzman, Graham Drake and Eve Salisbury (1999). "Athelston: Introduction". University of Rochester. Archived from the original on 2012-08-04. Retrieved 10 April 2012.